discuss the major issues which led to the formal split of congress in 1969?
Answers
1969 marked the critical moment in history of INC where congress got split into 2 parts. Lets look into historical development causing the split:
When Nehru passed away there was huge political vacuum to be filled up so K. Kamraj, the president of the Congress party consulted party leaders and Congress members of Parliament and found that there was a consensus in favour of Lal Bahadur Shastri. He was unanimously chosen as the leader of the Congress parliamentary party and thus became the country’s next Prime Minister. Shastri’s Prime Ministership came to an abrupt end on 10 January 1966, when he suddenly expired in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Thus the Congress faced the challenge of political succession for the second time in two years. This time there was an intense competition between Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi. Morarji Desai had earlier served as Chief Minister of Bombay state (today’s Maharashtra and Gujarat) and also as a Minister at the centre. Indira Gandhi, ad also been Union Minister for Information in the Shastri cabinet. This time the senior leaders in the party decided to back Indira Gandhi, but the decision was not unanimous. The contest was resolved through a secret ballot among Congress MPs. Indira Gandhi defeated Morarji Desai by securing the support of more than two-thirds of the party’s MPs, her administrative and political inexperience would compel her to be dependent on them for support and guidance and was referred to as “Gungi Gudiya” by some senior congress leaders.
Year 1967 (Fourth general elections) was landmark year in India’s political and electoral history The results jolted the Congress at both the national and state levels. The Congress did manage to get a majority in the Lok Sabha, but with its lowest tally of seats and share of votes since 1952. Half the ministers in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet were defeated. This was result of Opposition parties were in the forefront of organising public protests and pressurising the govt. Thus parties that were entirely different and disparate in their programmes and ideology got together to form anti-Congress fronts in some states and entered into electoral adjustments of sharing seats in others. The socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia gave this strategy the name of ‘Non-Congressism’.
After elections She had to deal with the ‘Syndicate’, a group of powerful and influential leaders from within the Congress & who were in control of the party’s organisation like K Kamraj, SK Patil, S Nijalingappa, N Sanjeeva Reddy and Atulya Ghosh . The Syndicate had played a role in the installation of Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister by ensuring her election as the leader of the parliamentary party. These leaders expected Indira Gandhi to follow their advise. Gradually, however, Indira Gandhi attempted to assert her position within the government and the party. She chose her trusted group of advisers from outside the party. Slowly and carefully, she sidelined the Syndicate.
Indira Gandhi adopted a very bold strategy. She converted a simple power struggle into an ideological struggle. She launched a series of initiatives to give the government policy a Left orientation. She got the Congress Working Committee to adopt a “Ten Point Programme” in May 1967. This programme included social control of banks, nationalisation of General Insurance, ceiling on urban property and income.
The factional rivalry between the Syndicate and Indira Gandhi came in the open in 1969. Following President Zakir Hussain’s death, the post of President of the India fell vacant that year. Despite Mrs Gandhi’s reservations the ‘syndicate’ managed to nominate her long time opponent and then speaker of the Lok Sabha, N. Sanjeeva Reddy, as the official Congress candidate for the ensuing Presidential elections.
Indira Gandhi retaliated by encouraging the then Vice-President, V.V. Giri, to file his nomination as an independent candidate. The then Congress President S. Nijalingappa issued a ‘whip’ asking all the Congress MPs and MLAs to vote in favour of Sanjeeva Reddy, the official candidate of the party.
After silently supporting V.V. Giri, the Prime Minister openly called for a ‘conscience vote’ (Antaratama ki Awaaz) which meant that the MPs and MLAs from the Congress should be free to vote the way they want. The election ultimately resulted in the victory of V.V. Giri, the independent candidate, and the defeat of Sanjeeva Reddy, the official Congress candidate.
The defeat of the official Congress candidate formalised the split in the party. The Congress President expelled the Prime Minister from the party. She claimed that her group was the real Congress. By November 1969, the Congress group led by the ‘syndicate’ came to be referred to as the “Congress (Organisation)” and the group led by Indira Gandhi came to be called the “Congress (Requisitionists)”. These two parties were also described as Old Congress and New Congress.
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